Stefany Valentine’s debut YA novel, First Love Language, has become a mirror for her own journey in reconnecting with her heritage. It follows 17-year-old transracial adoptee Catie, who doesn’t remember much about her Taiwanese biological mother and wants to connect with her culture by learning Mandarin. When she meets “Blackanese” teen Toby, the pair make a deal: he will help her learn Mandarin, and she will give him tips on how to date. There are few intimacies greater than language, and the pair find themselves growing closer as Catie delves deeper into her history and biological roots.
Valentine, who is also a transracial adoptee, was inspired to bring this aspect of her life to the page in 2020, while grappling with the rise of anti-Asian hate during Covid. She too was disconnected from her mother when she was adopted, and after years of searching for her, had turned up nothing.
“I’d never actually sat down and reconciled my own relationship with my Asian identity,” Valentine says. “This is a story that I wish could have happened to me when I was 17. All the regrets and loss and grief that I have carried with me my entire life—I dumped it all out on the page.”
Valentine was originally pursuing dreams of working in radio and television but was advised by her mother-in-law to switch to a more “lucrative” field such as medicine. Despite shifting to a bachelor’s degree in health sciences, Valentine spent years after graduating from Texas A&M searching for work in the field, picking up a part-time job at a gym and writing during her spare time. She’d completed seven other manuscripts over the course of almost 10 years that never made it out of the query trenches before First Love Language caught the eye of Ann Rose at the Tobias Literary Agency in 2021 during #AAPIPit, a pitch event on Twitter. After rounds of editing, the manuscript was acquired by Elizabeth Lee at Penguin Workshop in 2023. “It really goes to show how you just need the right person in your corner to help you get to where you want to be,” Valentine says.
Things took a serendipitous turn in 2024. As Valentine was in the editing process for her novel about a girl searching to reconnect with her mother, she got a call her protagonist could only dream of, on New Year’s Eve no less: Valentine’s sister-in-law had met a woman in church who knew Valentine’s biological mother. Just two weeks later, mother and daughter reunited.
“To this day I am still processing it,” Valentine says of how her life has imitated her book. “I think as humans, we try to find meaning in the chaos, and that’s perfectly valid. But maybe it’s like all of this awful heartache and trauma needed to happen in order to balance out the greatness that was going to come.”
And greatness has arrived: her debut novel published in January, giving her the opportunity to showcase the adoption experience through her own eyes.
“So much of the adoption narrative is told by adopters, and they almost always pitch themselves as saviors of these hopeless children,” Valentine says. “But we are so much more complicated than that, and we have a right to tell our own stories.”
Valentine continues to take a literal page from her own book. She’ll be heading to Taiwan later this year to learn more about her heritage and spend time with her mother, who will only be 15 minutes away from where she’s staying.
And more books are on the way. In 2026, readers can find Love Makes Mochi, the final title of Joy Revolution’s Love in Translation series. Valentine is also working on a third YA novel that follows a teen grappling with proximity to whiteness and the model minority myth.
Valentine sees how her motivation to pursue her dreams circles back to her biological mother. “I got to see how much of a firecracker she is, and how she’s so driven and determined,” she says. “And after meeting her, I was like, Oh my God, I got this from you.”
